WHATEVER happened to the days when all cricket books began with the phrase: ``I was only three years old when I first picked up a bat in the back garden of our modest terraced house in Swanage, and from the moment dad bowled me a Cox's orange pippin, and I plonked it straight over the fence into next door's outside privy, I knew that I wanted to become a professional cricketer.''
What's more, that was usually the most controversial bit of the entire book. Nowadays they invariably start off with: ``I never got on with Brearton, who to my mind couldn't captain a rowing boat. And as for the chairman of selectors, his brain was about half the size of a frozen pea, and it's a wonder our ace fast bowler, dear old Cornwall, didn't stick one on him.''
You can always tell when a new cricket season is under way, by the gentle thwack of libel writ on doorstep. As happy families go, the Borgias are not even in the frame, although the irony of this summer is that the barbs are coming from a most unlikely source. In Jack Russell Unleashed, one of the gentle poodles of the county circuit is taking several bites out of the postman's trousers, and thoase of just about everybody else.
This follows hard on the heels of the Botham-Lamb-Imran High Court affair; Devon Malcolm being called to account for uncomplimentary comments about Raymond Illingworth; and Illy himself up before the beak for firing back in his book One Man Committee.
Raymond, now safe from the authorities as a non-employee, has also hit back at Russell's unflattering description of him in newspaper extracts from his book, in a rival journal's running of what is known in the trade as a 'spoiler'. Illy will continue to air his views this summer in his own bashful way namely, that if wisdom was a commodity to be bought and traded on the stock markets, he would modestly feel obliged to report himself to the Monopolies' Commission.
The next cricketer scheduled to take his dirty washing to the publisher, as opposed to the Laundromat, is Michael Atherton, and although this is technically a biography, his collaboration with the author will make it a surprise if the views expressed do not come close to matching his own. Illy is not thought likely to emerge from it as a misunderstood Messiah.
All of this, perhaps understandably, is causing a certain amount of apoplexy in St John's Wood, although forgive me if I decline to reach for the Kleenex on their behalf. Ask most people for an example of a secretive society, and they will come up with something like the masons. Ask cricketing folk, and they will say, without much hestitation, the England and Wales Cricket Board.
Most of cricket's indifferent publicity is caused not by the likes of Jack Russell, Devon Malcolm, or Raymond Illingworth, but by the ECB and its spiritual cousin, the International Cricket Council. Their employee contracts are more like a pools coupon, not so much requiring a signature, as a cross in the box for no publicity.
Cricket may be a public entertainment, but it is run like a private club. Let's look at ball tampering, an emotive yet comparatively piffling issue elevated to ludicrous importance by the cricketing authorities' instinctive inclination to take - on every conceivable occasion - the Fifth Amendment.
In 1992, two umpires replaced the match ball in a one-day international at Lord's after deciding that it had been illegally interfered with - and the fingernail was pointed at the Pakistanis.
This ball is still locked in a Lord's safe, and Pakistan have been neither convicted nor exonerated. Had it been dealt with openly at the time, there would not have been the fuss generated either then or subsequently. However, the ICC chose to do the following.
On day one, the umpires were instructed not to say anything ``under ICC regulations''. Four days later, the harassed ICC secretary - its chairman was away in India keeping his head down - said he was still waiting for the umpires' report. Next morning, he said there would be a statement at ``midday''. This was changed to ``5pm'', then ``tomorrow''.
Tomorrow arrived, at which point the ICC finally decided to embrace one of three possibilities. 1) tell the truth; 2) tell a lie; 3) say nothing. They chose No 3. ``The umpires' report is confidential, and therefore the matter is closed.''
The then Test and County Cricket Board knew the truth of the matter, as their own media relations officer was present when the Pakistani manager was informed that the ball was being changed under Law 42 (5) ``Unfair Play''. He informed the media of this the same day - little realising that the TCCB's requirement of a media relations officer is for him to tell the press as little as possible, or preferably nothing. Soon after (totally unrelated, of course) his services were dispensed with.
In 1989, when David Gower was appointed captain on the Ted Dexter dream ticket, Ted told the nation that David was the ``choice of the England committee''. He was asked: ``Is that unanimous, Ted?''. Ted parrotted the same phrase, and little wonder. He had picked Mike Gatting, but Gatting had been vetoed for previous conduct unbecoming, and as a result, took himself off in a huff on a rebel tour to South Africa.
THE TCCB were unsuccesful in keeping the veto quiet, andthe damage was twice as severe for trying to sit on it. Incidentally, Gatting was vetoed for ``non-cricketing reasons'' by the chairman of the cricket committee.
When Atherton gave his original explanation to ICC match referee Peter Burge over the dirt in the pocket, the official statement was that Atherton's explanation had been accepted. ``What explanation was that then?'' ``Er, not saying.'' It is obviously in the constitution. If in doubt, say nowt.
As long as cricket's authorities remain so determined not to tell anyone anything at all, then the moral high ground they occupy when the likes of Russell burst into print is made of quicksand. How David Graveney - who has always answered a straight question with a straight answer - slipped through the net is anyone's guess.